As a rule of thumb, we recommend calibrating your industrial touch screen if the cursor is more than 0.25″ from the exact center of the point of touch. Doing so will increase the accuracy of the touch response and can make it easier to touch objects with pinpoint precision.

While the level of accuracy provided by the default alignment routine is sufficient for the vast majority of applications, an even greater degree of precision can be achieved by using the enhanced calibration routine provided with some versions of our Windows touch screen driver. Continue Reading…

Due to their advantages for the industrial market, Hope Industrial Systems’ products have always used resistive touch screen sensors from Elo TouchSystems , which support single-touch recognition. While many of the advanced touch features we have come to love in our smart phones require a “multi-touch” technology (like pinch-to-zoom), the recent release of a new series of drivers from Elo now allows some of these features to work with any Hope Industrial Touch Screen.

Elo provides the driver in the support section of their website under the “Windows 7 Multitouch” section. Although the listed notes for the driver mention that an IntelliTouch monitor is required, we have done extensive testing and found it to be compatible with our AccuTouch-enabled (resistive) Elo touch screens. Continue Reading…

Hope Industrial recently attended our first show in the United Kingdom: MACH 2012 in Birmingham, presented by the Manufacturing Technologies Association. This was an excellent introduction to the UK market for our new Hope Industrial UK operations.

There are several factors to consider when an existing panel mount monitor has failed and it is out of warranty. Most users opt to replace the display since many manufacturers will charge more and take longer to repair the monitor when compared to buying new. Much of the reason is due to the declining cost of LCD’s over the past several years. Therefore, it is wise to consider all the factors in total cost of ownership when selecting a monitor for a new project.

Often our customers find it critical to be able to see their HMI screens or access their systems’ controls at any given time. By default, most operating systems are designed to put the monitor or touch screen to sleep after 10 minutes. While allowing the display to sleep is recommended to extend its lifespan and conserve power, some customers find it important to be able to access their system at a moment’s notice. It is important to note that no Hope Industrial displays put themselves to sleep; they only revert to power saving (sleep) mode when they are not receiving a video signal, or have been specifically instructed to do so by the host operating system. Continue Reading…

In this final week of December, like most people we at Hope Industrial have been reflecting on the past year. 2011 has been a wonderful year for us with solid growth, many new products released, and several milestones passed. We are extremely thankful for all of our new customers, and also indebted to the many companies who have standardized on our products over the years.

The Hope Industrial family has grown this year, and there are many new faces here in our Atlanta offices. Of the many milestones we passed in 2011, we are most proud to announce the sale of our 35,000th monitor just this month!

Connecting electronic equipment on the factory floor is an important aspect of any control system. There are several options for connecting data and power to monitors and other devices. Regarding the cables themselves, there are options in cable quality, shielding, terminations, etc. There are also decisions that affect their appearance and how they are protected and sealed. Continue Reading…

Hope Industrial Systems’ Windows-based customers find UltraMon a useful application for managing multiple monitor environments. There are a few features that are particularly beneficial and effective for improved efficiency of customers’ work environments.

UltraMon has the unique ability to create special “Shortcuts” that don’t just open an application, but can also control where application windows are placed on the desktop, and how they are sized. UltraMon Shortcuts can start an application on a specific monitor, a precise location, and even an exact size. Here is an example of how this might help in an industrial control environment: Continue Reading…